Leicester City FC gets to grips with IoT

Analysis of data transmitted to the cloud from increasingly sophisticated sensors is helping to keep Leicester FC players at the peak of physical fitness.

Leicester has also had the fewest injured players over the season, a fact that may have a lot to do with the club’s clever use of technology. Players wear Catapult Sport’s OptimEye S5 device, which collects data relating to acceleration, direction, position and, crucially, the impact of collisions. These sensors can collect 800-900 data points per second.

Scott Drawer, formerly Rugby Football Union’s performance manager and now with cycling’s Team Sky, says: “It may be that they have been using the data in a much smarter way to rest, rotate and recover players appropriately.”Fundamentally, they are able to have their best players available a lot more, so there is no doubt some of their processes are helping them to do that.”

Rival club Southampton FC makes its players wear GPS units during training, and Alek Gross, the club’s head of sports science, says players have experienced fewer soft tissue and overuse injuries since introducing the tech.

Stay right up-to-date with TechSparx. Read East and West Midlands regional business technology news aggregated and also written by us, all in one place on TechSparx. Curated and brought to you by TechSparx.